Need some advice on buying viable vsts

Now that I have gotten over the hurdle of getting my first composition accepted, I am in the market to buy professional grade vsts. In a few days I will be buying flstudios signature bundle that comes packed with vst goodies. I however am looking for professional grade orchestral instruments. I am eyeballing East West Hollywood strings for the actual orchestral instruments them selves and East west symphonic choir because it has that amazing Text to choir ability(Extremely excited.) For those who might have gotten these products, am I investing my money in a good place here?

Ehhh, I would suggest you stay away from East West Symphonic Choir—in my opinion, it’s not as great as it seems to be. For choir libraries, I highly suggest you purchase either 8Dio Requiem, Soundiron Mars, or Soundiron Venus.

As far as strings, there’s a new violin library coming out by 8Dio called Adagio, and it sounds really awesome so far. You should look it up. I don’t personally have EWQL Hollywood Strings, so I can’t say much. I prefer Audiobro’s L.A. Scoring Strings sounds better than EWQL for strings though.

I’d agree with Thomas about LASS , they’ve really upped their game with the ARC tool in version 2. It saves a LOT of time configuring stuff, which you’ll want to do in order to get the most out of the library. The new Stage/Color feature is pretty neat too.

I’ve been hearing good things about Cinematic Strings 2 as well, and with it being half the cost of LASS it might be worth a look. http://www.cinematicstrings.com/

I have Requiem, and it doesn’t have “text to choir” in the traditional sense – it has a bunch of different syllables that you can swap between with keyswitches.

tacoMusic said
I just worked out I’d need to earn at least $6,000 to buy the libraries I’m interested in at the moment…hoping AudioJungle can help me reach that before I reach the ripe old age of 1,238…

I understand this situation, but as composers we are lucky. If you think how much a professional violinist will spend on their equipment, ($100,000 or more), this cost is very small. If you are choosing composing as a career you need to make the appropriate investments and plan for them.

This advice was given at a Q & A at the Grammy museum by some guy called Hans Zimmer.

As for the libraries, Requiem is awesome, so is Lass and Hollywood Strings. As always you need to take time to learn the product to get the best out of it. These libraries can give amazing results.

True Gareth, and I’m not complaining that it’s an extortionate amount of money by any means (especially given the amount of work that goes into making these instruments), just that it takes a long time to gather the funds to make those appropriate investments.

I often wonder whether working with the resources one has available is a better way than always wanting the next library – it’s a bit of a never-ending cycle these purchases. For example, I’m starting to (slowly) build a resource of my own from recordings, so I really understand how difficult it is to build these AU’s / VSTs from scratch and make them sound realistic.

Obviously the main benefit of buying them is the time and money it saves you when you need to use such an instrument in your projects (particularly with Requiem, which would be nearly impossible to put together oneself!).

If you’re looking for a big Hollywood sound I would also look at ProjectSAM Orchestral Essentials. Their entry level package containing strings, some brass, winds and so forth. Although, it doesn’t have choirs. I would also like to mention Cinesamples Voxos when it comes to choir libraries. They also have some other great cinematic libraries such as percussion.

No problem musicservice . For those who are not to keen on East West symphonic choirs, what are the cons of the program? Basically right now I am working with free soundfonts and I am willing to forgo a little quality to be able to utilize the “Text to choir” function. I think that has some major implications…however I dont want to spend 600 bucks on it if it sounds horrible.

Post Reply

<strong></strong> to make things bold
<em></em> to emphasize
<ul><li> or <ol><li> to make lists
<h3> or <h4> to make headings
<pre></pre> for code blocks
<code></code> for a few words of code
<a></a> for links
<img> to paste in an image (it'll need to be hosted somewhere else though)
<blockquote></blockquote> to quote somebody